What Happens Afterward

unapologetically you

unapologetically you

"Suzy?" I called, stepping into the great room.

The two of them had taken the television from its alcove in the wall and plugged it in near a table. "I don't get what they mean, 'can't get a signal'. There were never problems with signal before," one of them said.

"Excuse me," I continued, "I'm back."

The two of them glanced at me for just a second, before returning to the television. "None of the inputs do anything, it's all just a blue screen. I don't understand, it should just work."

"Suzy, ...Suzy, I'd like to get to know you."

"How so?" one of them asked, not missing a beat, "What poisons did you go pick up?"

"No poisons, nothing. Just me and you. And you, too. Let's talk."

"In a minute, it's eighteen-hundred, Jackson's supposed to be on."

"I... regret to inform you, Miss Emmerson, there are no broadcasts. Again, and I must stress this, you are completely disconnected from Horizon. They are far from the Earth now, they don't really mind you missing."

"But this is important, the eighteen-hundred broadcast?" one of them said.

"...Tell you what. I'll get the television working tonight, can we just talk?"

The two of them looked at each other for a fraction of a second, and then nodded. "Sure."

They sat in two chairs adjacent to one another. "So, if you don't mind, I'd like to get your full name, please."

"Miss Suzy Sgeulaiche Emmerson," one of them said.

"Miss Suzy Sgeulaiche Emmerson," the other said.

"So Linus didn't lie about that, then. You were a librarian? What sorts of information does that entail?"

"Mostly just putting things back where they belong, anymore. People came in on the regular and destroyed entire shelves. Horizon didn't like how my boss ran things."

"And how was that?"

"Well, it was just you paid once and you got to come in and check out a book for up to two weeks at a time," the other said, "it just cost a tenner, that was it. What the Norwich regional officer wanted was a ten thousand pound credit check, a weekly fee of two hundred and fifty pounds, two hundred pounds per day a book was checked out, and they wanted the final say on what people could and couldn't read, they wanted to personally redact information from each book we owned."

"But yet you want to return to Horizon," I said.

"Well, yes. It's my fault for not submitting to their rules, they are right, after all. Horizon has proven themselves trustworthy over determining what information we need not know, and keeping illegal materials isn't right of us."

"And if you lose the library, then what?"

"I'll probably go to work at a Truthhouse, going to other libraries and redacting incriminating information alongside them. Of course, I don't know if I can afford to keep that sort of job."

"You... pay to work?" I asked.

"Doesn't everybody?"

"Suzy... both of you... there is an entire world beyond Horizon. Ashley can tell you more, she never knew a world where they took over every aspect of her life."

"What do you mean?" One of them asked.

"You were saying my name?" Ashley called, stepping into the room.